


secret keepers

by spideywhiteys



Series: 365 Days of Naruto AUs [37]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Fantasy elements, Gen, Resolution, actually the fic is pretty ambiguous in general, just a small town ninja...living in a modern world, technically a happy ending, yugao is a writer, yugao pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29254764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spideywhiteys/pseuds/spideywhiteys
Summary: Yugao has always known she was a little more than everyone else, thattheywere a little more. Not in some trivial narcissistic way, no, but in the way they would fall into habits they've never learned, or dread birthdays, or dream of memories they can't remember.
Relationships: Gekkou Hayate/Uzuki Yuugao, Uzuki Yuugao & Uchiha Shisui
Series: 365 Days of Naruto AUs [37]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086938
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	secret keepers

**Author's Note:**

> Day 37: Writer AU ft. reincarnation / Yugao + Shisui

There is a cottage just outside of town, one made of cobblestone and sun-bleached wood. It’s an aged thing, a relic of centuries gone by. Still standing tall and sturdy, dripping with maintained ivy and creeping flowers. For as long as Yugao has lived here, which is the entirety of her life, it’s been an empty, sunny place. Healthy in the way no abandoned house should be. As a child she used to speculate about secret elves that provided upkeep. As an adult, she’s still not sure that isn’t the case. 

It’s fenced in by stone walls, tall enough that at this age her head just barely reaches the top. She has fond memories of being young and getting dared to scale the seemingly massive obstacle to peer into the orderly yard on the other side. Even now, older and more conscientious, she can’t forget the sight of the stepping stone pathway leading to the cottage, flowers carefully grown like purposeful borders. The always  _ perfectly  _ trimmed rose bushes and the birdbath coated in moss — persistently filled with water no matter how many days passed or how hot the day grew during summer. 

She puts thoughts of that mysterious little cottage out of her head the older she grows, and by the time she’s returned from college, it’s barely a blip on her radar. She’s thinking about settling here, in the quaint little town that she adores, with a man who loves her. Yugao comes back from college and decides a degree was pointless; she doesn’t desire new scenery or anything complex like a cushy job in the city surrounded by loud sounds and smog. 

She has Hayate, she has her computer. That’s enough for her, that’s enough for her to write the novels she dreams of and marry the man of her dreams. For some odd, exhausting reason that has no name, she feels as if she’s already had a lifetime of action. A lifetime of stress and adventure.

Some nights she wakes up in a cold sweat, blackness in her memory but a desperate need to check Hayate’s pulse. Some days she brews him tea and tells him to mind his breathing, and they both pause because there’s nothing wrong with his breathing. But it feels like there should be.

Hayate sits up at night when he can’t sleep, staring out the window, up at the stars with too many questions and not enough answers. She has to pull him back to bed and tries not to think about why they both feel a sense of dread with every birthday that passes. Like they’re running on borrowed time and some great calamity is catching up to them.

It’s a relief when, on Hayate’s twenty-fourth birthday, the feeling dissipates entirely. The storm has passed, and Hayate says the oddest thing.

“I’ve never been this old before.”

She can only laugh, though a stone drops in her stomach. “Well, of course you haven’t.”

And they don’t speak of it but she thinks they both know there’s something about them that’s a little different. Something about them that transcends everyone else’s day to day lives.

It’s shortly  _ after  _ she comes to accept that perhaps she and Hayate are different — that they are a little more, and perhaps they will never know why — that smoke rises from the chimney of that abandoned, well cared for cottage just outside of town. She is typing away at her computer when she notices, the distant, curling smoke catching in the corner of her eye from beyond the window. For a moment she doesn’t really understand what she’s seeing. There’s no one who lives out there, no one at all. It’s just an old cottage full of ghosts — full of fairies, as the children claim, as she once claimed. 

Still, there is smoke in the sky and a home that’s never been occupied before. 

Yugao writes adventures, she doesn’t go on them. (Not anymore, she thinks. Not this time, even if she can’t remember another.) But she still finds herself clattering down her stairs, heart in her throat. For some reason, this feels important. She feels like if she misses this, the opportunity will never come back.  _ What _ opportunity, she doesn’t know. Just that it means something to the memories that don’t exist. Everything, maybe.

She runs in her shawl and slippers, not bothering to wonder at the sight she must make. She’s lived in this town her entire life;  _ this entire life. _ The neighbors likely won’t care, and she doesn’t care even if they do. She runs until the dirt roads of a country town disappear and are replaced with soft, green grass, trees looming before her. The path through the forest is a familiar one, etched in her mind and stored away with all the other important memories that belong to her  _ now. _

_ I always knew there was something about this place. _

Call it the writer in her, call it the woman she grew to be. Call it the dreams she wakes from and can’t remember. Yugao has always been more in this life than most. 

The walls are just as tall as she remembers, her vision  _ just _ unable to crest the top. There’s never been a door. Never been a gate. Just four walls and a home inside, sealed away like a secret. She puts her hands on the sun-warm stone and heaves herself up, perhaps not as agile as she had been a few years ago, but still young and spry enough to get atop the wall with ease. The view is as she recalls.

Except for the man standing in the yard, half turned towards her as he stares up at the sky. His hair is the darkest black she’s ever laid eyes on, like a raven’s wings or ink, curled and messy as if he’d just rolled from his bed. His eyes gleam like polished obsidian, and he looks as old as her, and she doesn’t even know the age that resides within her. 

He is older than he’s ever been.

“Hayate doesn’t have a cough here.” She says, the words spilling from her, unbidden. The part of her that she doesn’t understand fits words into her mouth, twisting her tongue before she can understand what it is that’s coming forth. “He works in the fields and he doesn’t struggle with it. I’m a writer. I like the quiet — don’t think I could handle the city. There’s so much sound, so much movement. For once, I want to be nothing. We got the chance to be happy.”

“Yugao,” he says her name the way people laugh, lips curled into a smile that feels dangerous but not in a dangerous way, not to her. There’s no violence, but he is a prowling feline. They were never close. It doesn’t feel like that, no. But she feels a sense of camaraderie with him, the way people do when they survive some traumatic event together. 

“I almost forgot your name.”

She laughs, because she doesn’t know what else to do. “Shisui,” his name is old and foreign in her mouth. He died young. “Are you happy this time?”

He hums, tilting his head back up to the sky. Under the spill of sunlight through the trees and cotton-puff clouds, he is ethereal, and perhaps her childhood daydreams of fairies weren’t so far off after all. “Yes,” he finally replies, savoring the words. “Yes, I am. We all are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow / Support me on [Tumblr!](https://spideyfoof.tumblr.com/)


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